I will wait on the Lord

There is a movie that I absolutely love called The Testaments: Of one fold and one Shepherd. It is a story of a family in the ancient Americas and what happens in their lives as the Savior is going about his ministry in Israel. There is a scene where the father of the family is testifying at a trial. He says, "I have waited for the Messiah my whole life, and I will wait a while longer." That thought has been running through my mind a lot today. Being the nerdy self I am I decided to look up "wait on the Lord" in the scriptures. There are over 40 scriptures that have that combination of words. So then I got to thinking, what does it mean to wait on the Lord? In the index one of the other words to look at was "watch". There are about another 20 scriptures that talk about watching for the Lord. As I was reading the verses that came up in my search I noticed a theme. The world was clamoring for attention, sometimes calling the people waiting foolish. Sometimes there were outright attacks on the people waiting or watching for the Lord. These people were faithful, sure sometimes they messed up, but they always repented and continued the watch.

I look at my life, it isn't quite what I would like it to be, and I mess up more than I would like to admit, but every time I repent and return to the wait, life is better. There are time when the enemy of my soul tries to get me to think that the Lord has forgotten me or forgotten His promises to me. In fact, a situation like that came up for me late last week and into the early part of this week. I had serious doubts about the path I was on. But then, like He always does, the Lord parted the clouds and helped me see that He is always there.

I am not a patient person in general, so waiting is not really my strong point and Satan knows that very well. We live in an instant gratification society, we have on demand movies, we have high speed internet, instant messaging, instant soup, fast food. And still the Lord asks us to wait. Waiting is hard, but it teaches us discipline, it really helps teach and reinforce faith.

So like Helam in the movie, and people in the scriptures, I will wait on the Lord. And when I mess up and get impatient I will use the wonderful gift of the atonement to repent and start fresh.